The statistics define “for health care” inaccurately. The dollars may be spent in the health care field and have almost nothing to do with health care itself… It is meaningless to talk about the dollars spent if there is no way to assign a value to what is being purchased– something only the market can do.

I’m not saying those shouldn’t be part of an aggregate healthcare measurement however, because the US has had one of the highest levels of disposable income in the world, our healthcare costs reflect our discretionary healthcare expenditures as well as “necessary” healthcare costs and this artificially boosts our healthcare costs in comparison to other countries without our same level of disposable income.

You can’t squeeze H20 out of turnips.
Like our pharmacy colleagues for the past 30 years,
physicians and hospital payments have been suppressed for years.
The reasons are well known (third parties),
and add to the annual begathon by the AMA (definition – A telethon or pledge drive repeated so often that it becomes a constant, shameless, begging for money).
There are more bean counters (in doctors’ offices/hospitals and TP’s) than mosquitoes along the Amazon.
It’s also a fee for service problem….If the doctor (primary care) doesn’t see the patient, then he doesn’t get paid even if it’s a cash-paying fee for service practice.
Normal market forces are applied when physicians work directly for their patients and have pre-paid fees allowing unlimited access to care without the beancounters in the office or third party.

Other examples include technological advances that have lowered the cost of vision correction surgery and have allowed the switch to minimally invasive surgery which obviates the need for a hospital stay.

While technological advance may increase overall expenditure because more can be done to improve health and functioning, it isn’t clear that it necessarily increases costs.